


Sleep Tight

by Higgles123



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23915959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Higgles123/pseuds/Higgles123
Summary: You go out for the night, leaving Alfie to look after his three young daughters alone
Relationships: Alfie Solomons/Reader
Comments: 1
Kudos: 63





	Sleep Tight

Alfie jumped up and growled to himself. It was five past fucking ten and they were still awake. All three of them. His precious little angels, the apples of his eye. He loved them to death but he was thinking about phoning Tommy Shelby to see if he had space in his children’s home for three more. You, his lovely wife, had gone to a birthday party of an old friend’s, and truly Alfie had been more than happy to watch the kiddies while you let you hair down. After all you had spent the last god knows how many years popping out babies for him and you never took time for yourself. You never asked for a night off or for more than just ten minutes to grab a quick shower; and Alfie had been determined to make sure you went out and had a good time. Ollie’s wife, Miriam, was going with you and Alfie knew without a shadow of a doubt that if Ollie could manage his brood alone for one night then he most definitely could as well. 

It was going to be a doddle. Well, that’s what he had thought. They lulled him into a false sense of security at first and really he should have known it was all too easy when they went to bed without fuss. They had a bedtime story and a kiss and cuddle, and as Alfie sat in his arm chair stroking Cyril’s head, he had been completely oblivious to the pandemonium taking place upstairs. Little did he know that the girls he had thought to be fast asleep had decided to run themselves a bath and pour the entire contents of the bubble bath bottle into the running water. Then they had raided their mother’s toiletries to create their own perfumes and body wash concoctions while they waited for their bath to run. And because just apparently none of that was enough, they had decided to use their mother’s sanitary napkins as make shift face masks with which to apply face cream and keep it there. 

Truly Alfie wondered how three small people could do so much in the space of less than ten minutes, and by some miracle he only heard them because one of them fell over, and racing up the stairs he realised the bath was only minutes from overflowing. Disaster averted, Alfie made quick work of getting them back into bed and getting a promise from them all to stay in bed and be good girls. And he had to give them their due because for the last two hours they had indeed stayed in their beds. Yeah, they stayed in their beds and instead shouted him for every single fucking thing they could think of. 

Daddy I’m thirsty. Daddy I’m hungry. Daddy I need the toilet. Daddy there’s a monster under my bed. Daddy I’m too hot. Daddy I’m too cold. Daddy. Daddy. Daddy.

“Daddy!”

“I’m comin’!” he shouted, bounding up the stairs with Cyril hot on his heels. 

“Daddy, Hannah took my dolly!” Soraya, the youngest at four, pouted. 

“Well she took the chocolate biscuit I hid under my pillow for the midnight feast,” Hannah argued. 

“You weren’t supposed to tell him about the midnight feast, you idiot,” the eldest, Raisa huffed bearing a remarkable likeness to her father when he pulled such a face.

“Oi, don’t call your sister an idiot,” Alfie pointed at her and narrowed his eyes. 

“Well she _is_ an idiot,” Raisa scowled. 

“If I hear you say that word one more time, Raisa Solomons I’ll wash your bloody mouth out with soap.” 

“Do it, Daddy, do it!” Soraya clapped excitedly. “Idiot isn’t the only bad word she said you know. This morning she banged her foot and said fu-“

“- That’s enough!” Alfie roared. “The next person in this house to say a bad word doesn’t get puddin’ for a week.”

The girl launched into an angry tirade proclaiming how unfair such a threat was and how at a combined age of only fifteen their little lives were ruined because pudding was the best part of eating dinner. 

“Well you should have thought about that before you started havin’ such potty mouths,” Alfie pursed his lips and in the poor evening light didn’t see the drawing pin on the floor until it met with the sole of his foot. “Argh you fuckin’ fucker.”

“Daddy!” The girls were aghast. 

“You sweared,” Soraya gasped. “I’m telling mummy and there will be no pudding for you never ever again.”

“Mummy told aunty Miriam the other day that you need to stop eating pudding anyway cos your belly is getting too big,” Raisa commented.

“Is that right?” Alfie raised an eyebrow. “Well Mummy wants to be careful what she says cos little pigs have big ears, don’t they?”

“I didn’t see any pigs at aunty Miriam’s,” Raisa frowned. 

“I thought we weren’t supposed to like pigs?” Hannah knitted her eyebrows together in confusion.

“We can like pigs, we just can’t eat them you idiot.”

“Raisa,” Alfie warned, wondering when his eldest child suddenly became reminiscent of a teenager. 

“What? It’s true.”

“I said no swearin.”

“Idiot isn’t a real swear word,” Raisa flipped her hair over her shoulder as though she knew everything. 

“It is if I say it is, young lady,” Alfie shook his head at her. “Now all three of you, get your smelly little arses into bed or else.”

“Or else what?” Hannah asked even as she climbed into bed, and Alfie smiled to himself. She was the best behaved one his little Hannah, but in typical middle child fashion she always let the other two encourage her to be naughty so that she wouldn’t be left out of whatever mischief they were up to. 

“Or else the tickling monster might come,” little Soraya giggled, diving beneath her covers in anticipation. 

“You’d like that wouldn’t you, my little Soraya sunshine?” Alfie chuckled. “But there’s no ticklin’ monster now because it’s far too late and it’s time for all the little girls in the world to go to bed.”

“Mummy’s not in bed,” Hannah said quietly. 

“Yeah but that’s cos she’s a big girl, aint she?”

“No, she’s not,” Soraya shook her head and peeked out from beneath her quilt. “Mummy is so small that when we go on holiday to the beach, Mummy never has to bend down to walk inside our special cave like you do.”

“That’s because Mummy is small but she’s not little,” Raisa said knowingly. “She might look small but she’s still a grown up lady and grown up ladies can stay out as late as they want.”

“Like Michael Epsom’s mummy?” Hannah frowned. “Mummy told aunty Miriam that Michael Epsom’s mummy is a lady of the night, so is mummy a lady of the night too?”

“Not quite,” Alfie bit the side of his cheek, trying his best not to laugh at the innocent question. “Now come on, bed time all of you.”

“Can we have another story, Daddy?” Soraya asked.

Alfie was ready to put his foot down and say no, but the three pairs of eyes staring back at him pleadingly were too hard to resist. 

“Just one,” he agreed.

“Yay!” they chorused happily. 

“Can we have the one about the teddy bear’s picnic?”

“No I want the one about goldilocks!”

“I want the one with the big scary dragon that breathes fire!”

Alfie rolled his eyes as they chatted over one another, each one of them desperate for their favourite book to be the one he chose, and when he held up a hand to silence them he was rather surprised when the room turned quiet. 

“How about we have this one?” he suggested, holding up the one about Hansel and Gretel. 

The girls nodded and lay down in their beds, ready for the story to begin. By the time Alfie had gotten half way through it, Raisa was already asleep and snoring loudly. Soraya’s eyelids kept fluttering and he knew she was pretty much asleep too, but Hannah, his little bookworm, was wide awake waiting to hear what would happen next. 

“Daddy, I’m sorry we’ve been naughty,” she whispered when he finished the story and switched off the light. 

“I wouldn’t say you’ve been naughty Hannah bear,” he smiled, sitting down on the end of her bed. “Maybe just a little mischievous.”

“Do you think Mummy’s missing us?”

“Course she is,” Alfie patted her leg. 

“Did Mummy go out because she doesn’t like being with us?”

“Why would you think that, you silly sausage? Mummy looks after us all so much that it’s nice for her to go out with her friends and have some time for herself, but that don’t mean she doesn’t love bein’ here with you lot and me. When you go and play at Aunty Miriam’s and Uncle Ollie’s without me and mummy it’s not cos you don’t wanna be with us, is it? It’s just cos you wanna go and have some fun.”

“I know,” Hannah nodded, chewing her lip. “I just… the house feels strange when she’s not here and I don’t think I can fall asleep without her.”

“Don’t get upset, love,” Alfie wiped at the single tear that rolled down her rosy cheek. “By the time you wake up in the mornin’ Mummy will be home and waitin’ to give you lots of cuddles and make your favourite breakfast.”

“But I want her now,” Hannah’s bottom lip wobbled. 

“Well, I know I aint the same as Mummy but I’m here, aint I?” Alfie patted her rump playfully getting her to move over so he could climb into bed beside her. “We might be a little squished, but how about I stay here with you until you’re asleep? That make you feel a bit better?”

Hannah nodded and snuggled up as physically close to Alfie as she could, wrapping her arms and legs around him in an octopus like vice. She was asleep within minutes and Alfie breathed in the smell of the strawberry shampoo you washed all the kids hair with. Although judging by the sound of the screams and wails that came from the bathroom, one would forgiven for thinking that you were actually torturing them in some way and not just trying to get their hair clean. 

They might be handful sometimes, but he wouldn’t be without them. And he knew he owed you more thanks sometimes than he gave you for looking after them with such ease while running the house and still always having time for him at the end of the day. He grinned to himself. Yeah, he would give you a thank you that you most certainly wouldn’t forget when you got home. But for now, he’d just rest his eyes for a while. 

You arrived home just after midnight to find the house still in one piece and looking pretty much the same as when you left it. You smiled when you went to check on the girls and you saw Alfie tucked up in bed with Hannah. You didn’t have the heart to disturb him because he looked so peaceful. To think you had been worried about leaving him all on his own with the girls tonight. Turns out you had worried for nothing.

“Good night my loves,” you whispered to your sleeping family as you closed the bedroom door over quietly. “Sleep tight.”


End file.
